An exquisite light

Today an intersection of, I am supposing, a perfect sun angle and intensity and perfect atmospheric conditions produced the most exquisite light seen here in many a moon. If I was a painter I would have spent the entire afternoon painting. I am a bicyclist and a photographer, I got on my bicycle and went looking for a photo opportunity.I love those cows. Today I was not alone out there. In fact, I saw lots and lots of other bicycles including the first one of the day within a mile after leaving home. It was a nice day.

It was a south wind so I was headed down (I think of south as down, who doesn't?) into the city. The security guard at Dead Man's Curve informed me right after the Fair that the bridge project would be completed in six weeks. Six weeks have passed and something pretty significant happened over there today. The new bridge was moved (by crane) underneath the old bridge and gradually raised into place. Really close followers of the Dead Man's Curve thread will recognize the progress. Most of the rest of us (yes, including me) will only note that today, from the side opposite to the usual photo opportunity side, I wasn't able to get as good an illustration of the newest changes as I might have. The failure was because the security guard made me leave the area. *sign* Such are the burdens of those seeking . . . something.Doesn't the sky look great? It is really, really, intensely blue.

I continued along into the city. I previously posted some time ago about a survey being done on this Emerald Ash borer thing. I posted a photo of this very tree. Today the tree is gone.As you can see, painted on the stump is "OK". I prefer to interpret this to mean that this tree was not infested. I prefer to interpret this as evidence that we and our ash trees still have an outside chance of surviving this whole deal. We shall see.

The south wind kept getting stronger and I quickly tired of pushing south into the head wind. I headed east up University and cut back into the neighborhood north of University at the Ax-Man intersection. I was riding along just intending to check on RBR (who needs a lot of checking on) when the perfect lighting and my favorite color stopped me for a photo. I love orange.Again, don't you love that sky?

I rode past where RBR had her car parked and plunged again into the old neighborhood. As I was cycling past the Emily tree the current proprietor of the tree was engaged in some sort of major leave removal project. I swung over to his side of the street and offered as a conversational gambit that he should try to locate the guy who planted that tree and get him to clean up the leaves. Jim and I haven't seen each other for quite a few years and there was a tiny bit of preliminary just exactly who are you sort of awkwardness but we ended up with a nice chat. Before we finished his SU, Marilyn arrived home completing some sort of circle. Jim says that he has the identity of the guy who planted that tree somewhere in the house and that he may, in fact, try to contact said individual about the clean up.

Clearly I had already done all that I could so I moved along. It was a nice ride. I got to 300 miles for this month, something I was hopeful of doing. I have a couple of more days and I am going to need them or this month is going to end up with the fewest miles ridden in October since I started keeping track.

This evening in France FC Nantes tied Laval at home 0-0. With the point Nantes again adds to its hold on second. Unfortunately Caen came from behind for a 4-2 victory in its game. Nantes is firmly second but first place is disappearing over the horizon.

Today's sign that I am over the hill: I went to the grocery store after my bicycle ride to obtain some ingredients for dinner. At the register the really old check out lady (actually probably at least 55, almost as old as me) called me "Hun". I wasn't ready to be a middle aged lady's "Hun". *sigh* **deep sigh** ***really deep sigh***